


We Need To Talk About Junko

by Haruka_1224



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Incest, Letters, OCs - Freeform, The Enoshima parents
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-12-22
Packaged: 2018-12-15 16:50:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11810151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Haruka_1224/pseuds/Haruka_1224
Summary: Enoshima Akihisa, the father of the Despair Twins, writes letters to his wife expressing his regret and guilt at the way his daughters had turned out. He had ignored the warning signs, he had ignored her, until it was far too late."It is a sad thing for a father to outlive his children, I think, but it is a sadder thing for a father to want that. After all they have done, I cannot even find it in myself to forgive them, my own baby girls - so how could the rest of the world?"Inspired by Lionel Shriver's novel, "We Need To Talk About Kevin".





	1. Chapter 1

Dear Shizuko,

 

You must be wondering why I am writing to you, all of a sudden, after so many years. Well, the answer is simple - today, the survivors of the Killing Game had been rescued and made a public statement, confirming the deaths of both Mukuro and Junko. Not that they really needed confirming, since the entire world watched them both die on that twisted little television show they had created.

It is a sad thing for a father to outlive his children, I think, but it is a sadder thing for a father to want that. After all they have done, I cannot even find it in myself to forgive them, my own baby girls - so how could the rest of the world?

Twisted, they were twisted, there was something in Junko’s eyes that made my blood run cold. _Wickedness_ , you had called it, but I do not really agree. What I saw was not merely wickedness, no - it was emptiness, it was darkness, it was _despair_.

And Mukuro, my strange Mukuro, there was satisfaction in her eyes as she died. The detective said she had not expected it, that she felt betrayed, but she had only been half right. Mukuro did not know _when_ she would be killed by her sister, but she had always known she would be, and as she slid to the ground covered in spears, there had been love in her eyes. Looking back, I suppose that at the very least, I should have seen that coming - even I had seen how devoted Mukuro was to her little sister.

As a father, I wonder, where did I go wrong? Why did my children turn out to be murderers, how did they becomes so depraved? Had I not given them enough - no, _no_ , they had everything. Money, opportunities, private schools, and a foolish father that overlooked their wickedness.

Was it really _their_ wickedness? Even I, who had watched them grow up, cannot be sure - even some of the survivors feel that Junko was the only one to blame, that Mukuro had been brainwashed by her sister, just like all her minions. But that could not really be true, could it?

Shizuko, I am going to assume that you were right all along, that every word you ever said about them was the truth. Because you are right, they were evil, they did do terrible things as you always said they would, and I can no longer turn my eyes away from that truth.

But even then, I cannot find my answer - Mukuro’s subservience showed so early, practically from the moment they slid into the world. If Junko had brainwashed her, it would have been done in the womb, before anyone could disturb them. Is it possible for a collection of cells to brainwash another, or was Mukuro merely born twisted, just like her sister?

I had loved them dearly from the moment they tumbled into the world, pink and disgruntled; I was overcome by the desire to protect them with every inch of my being. Mukuro was a quiet baby from the very beginning, she never cried or made a fuss and would endure a soiled nappy for hours without a peep of complaint. Junko, on the other hand, always made her presence felt - she wailed if she was wet or hungry or bored, but that was what all babies did.

She was perfect, to me. She brightened at the sound of my voice, she giggled as I gently rocked her and tried to grasp at my fingers with her tiny fists. She was easy to please, crying only to have her needs met, and loved it when I sang to her. She was the apple of my eye, reactive and playful and sweet, exactly as I had imagined a baby to be.

But you, you claimed that whenever I was at work, she was a monster. She shrieked the house down and would never be placated, she threw her milk back up in defiance after being fed, or refused it altogether. She cried even when her nappy was clean, when you were singing to her, when you were playing with her - it was as if she hated the sight of you. When she grew a little more, she pulled at your hair or jammed her tiny fingers in your eyes, screaming angrily all the way. She kicked you, clawed at you, and refused to even endure being in the same room as you.

Obviously, I did not believe you, especially when what I saw and experienced contradicted your words. Junko was a happy baby, her eyes lit up at my voice, and you crept around her as if she were a cockroach.

“Babies can tell when you’re pretending to like them,” I had sneered at you - they were awful words, it was a terrible thing to say, but I was tired of your complaining.

You were the one who was so eager to have a child, filled with confidence at your ability to care for one. Yet, when push came to shove, you folded, hating your children irrationally and cringing every time you had to pick one of them up.

“Something is wrong with them,” you said, but I interrupted you.

My voice was like ice, “They’re babies, not dogs - you can’t train them in a few weeks to do parlor tricks.”

“It’s not like that!” I walked away as you said that, your voice fading along the hallway as I carried Junko away from you, smiling at her as she grinned back at me.

She was a beautiful baby, our Junko, her blue eyes were clear like the sky, her dark hair was thick and glossy, and her skin was soft and the color of milk. Her smile made her light up from the inside, it was breathtaking, and her giggles were like the chiming of little bells.

“She’s doing something to her sister!”

Hah. Doing something to her sister? The very thought had been ridiculous. What could a three-week old baby do that would be so bad? Sure, she was taking attention away from her sister, since Mukuro was so quiet and never wanted to interact with anyone, but if you made a conscious effort, you could easily spend time with them both.

Admittedly, it could be discouraging - Mukuro stubbornly refused to meet anyone’s eyes or to look at anything offered or pointed out to her. If she did not have eyes for Junko, I might have thought her blind. But I spent time with them both anyway, tried everything I could to gain Mukuro’s interest, and I believed you were not doing the same.

Could you blame me for thinking you a terrible mother?

You seemed repulsed by the girls, you cringed if you had to pick them up and avoided the nursery as if it were a torture chamber. You felt personally attacked whenever Junko cried and whenever your pathetic efforts to engage with Mukuro failed. On top of that, they were underweight, their faces narrow and their wrists bony, and both girls were always ravenous when I fed them despite your repeated claims that they wanted nothing.

Worst of all, when they were three months old, Mukuro had to be admitted to the hospital for severe dehydration - you had forgotten to feed her for nearly 36 hours, yet she had not made a single sound. I was furious - you told me you were taking good care of her, but it seemed you were incapable of remembering her because she did not cry.

“I spend too much time attending to your devil,” you had screamed, trying to defend yourself, “She takes up all my attention with her crying!”

“How dare you blame your own daughter for your incompetence?” I saw red, of course I would. You were blaming an innocent baby, a three month old, for your inability to feed your own children properly?

I took both girls to the hospital without you, refusing to trust you alone with Junko, whom you hated with such passion. The nurses were horrified when they heard you had forgotten to feed your own baby for so long, and they seemed to agree with me that you were a terrible mother as they rushed to help our little girl. When they took Mukuro away, Junko wailed, and the sound made Mukuro part her dry lips and whine, reaching out desperately for her sister as the doors closed between them.

It was the first sound Mukuro had ever made since her birth - she had not even cried when she was born, holding her counsel as if she were merely here to wait for her sister’s arrival.

It broke my heart to hear it, and at that moment, I hated you so vehemently that it frightened me. The girls were such sweet, innocent babies, and due to your negligence, they might be separated forever. Junko would be scarred for life if her sister did not make it, just because you had some crazy suspicions of a baby? Mukuro, innocent, blameless little Mukuro, might lose her life just because you could not remember to put a bottle or teat between her lips?

For the next two nights, I slept in the nursery on the floor, listening to Junko’s coos, comforting her when she wailed, missing the warmth of her sister. I sat up with her and reassured her with words she probably did not understand, promising her sister would be alright and back before she knew it. She liked the sound of my voice, gripping tightly onto my fingers as I sang her to sleep. Often, she woke, grasping at the empty space beside her, upset to find that her sister had yet to return.

She cried, oh how she cried, and my heart ached for the poor little girl who had never been without her sister for so long.

When Mukuro finally returned, she wept for the first time when she was put back by Junko’s side, and my heart had warmed. So young, so young, yet they already loved each other so deeply… I had thought it touching.

If only I had known what that love would become.

  


Enoshima Akihisa


	2. Chapter 2

Dear Shizuko,

 

It is so painful to hear the horrible things people are saying about my girls now that they are gone, even if I struggle to forgive them. Do you understand how it feels, to be torn between loving them and condemning them?

I honestly would doubt so, not that I could blame you. You never really saw them as your daughters, did you? You hated Junko, you felt as if she had stolen everything from you - your job, your husband’s attention, even your other daughter. From the moment Junko was born, everything seemed to gravitate toward her. I thought that you were jealous of her, that you hated how she was born with everything handed to her on a silver platter when you had struggled and built yourself from nothing.

But that wasn't the truth, not all of it, anyway. You hated her because only you could see the true Junko, the little monster that hid behind that pretty smile and those lovely blue eyes. You hated her because you were right, and nobody would believe you.

Still, it does not make hearing those words any easier. The Future Foundation, the supposed saviors of us all, is going all-out on their hateful rhetoric, blaming our Junko for everything, even the problems within society that existed decades, centuries, even, before she was born. At this point, Junko is essentially the devil, the leader of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, the chaos goddess Eris - anything and everything they can lay their hands on.

My poor girl, being used as a scapegoat…

But she was a monster, she deserves what they are doing to her name, doesn’t she? She caused the deaths of so many people, she hurt others without a single trace of remorse, and Mukuro facilitated it. Worst of all, they did it all just because Junko was _bored_.

She was bored. It seems like such an outlandish reason to destroy the world, doesn’t it? But looking back, I suppose that it was a very legitimate reason for our Junko, who was always tired of everything.

She was, what, ten months old when she was suddenly walking perfectly, as if she had been practicing in secret when nobody was looking. (Mukuro learned it a few days after, as if she had not bothered trying until Junko could do it, as if following after her sister was her only purpose in life.) Overjoyed with her newfound freedom, Junko got into everything and anything she could get her hands on like a normal child would, but promptly lost interest in all of five minutes.

I bought them mountains of toys, bought them each a toy box so they would not have to share everything, but it was futile. Mukuro had no interest in things that were not Junko, and was perfectly content to surrender everything to her sister, sitting silently by her side doing nothing at all. And Junko, she figured out all her toys in the blink of an eye and was bored by the repetition of it all. The round peg always went in the round hole, the jigsaw pieces could only ever fit with the same partners, the singing keyboard only had twelve songs - within ten minutes, she would have kicked the toy away, or torn it to pieces, and waddled off elsewhere in search of something to hold her attention.

Nothing ever did, not that it worried me. At the time, I was convinced that it was a sign of our daughter’s intelligence, that she considered normal baby things beneath her. I brought puzzles and toys for older children that quickly faced the same fate, solved and abandoned, filled with pride for my tiny genius.

“There’s something unnatural about that,” you whispered aggressively, as Junko stared intently at a rubix cube, “She knows too much, she understands too much.”

“Why are you whispering?” I resisted the urge to roll my eyes, absorbed by the image of our daughter figuring out the toy without even touching it.

Behind her, Mukuro had reassembled the broken pieces of the wooden horse that Junko had gotten bored with. However, instead of its original shape, Mukuro had turned it into what looked like a blade, the jagged edges collected together at the top, and the rounded ones forming a hilt.

“She’ll hear me,” you hissed; do you understand how ridiculous you sounded now? A grown woman, suspicious of being overheard by a baby girl who has not even spoken her first word? Worst of all, afraid of being _understood_ by said baby?

Ignoring you, I swooped over to take the makeshift blade from Mukuro before she could hurt anyone with it, scolding, “That’s dangerous, Mukuro. We can’t have you hurting anyone, can we?”

She froze up at the sound of my voice, staring blankly at the space where her blade used to be, soundless and motionless. It would be a mistake to think she was sad or throwing some sort of tantrum, _no_ \- Mukuro considered intrusions in her routine that were not Junko beneath her attention. They happened, and she would do whatever she could to avoid acknowledging that they did.

A cracking sound nearly made me jump, and I turned to see that Junko had tossed the rubix cube - completed, I must add - across the room, narrowly missing you. You jumped, anger all over your face as the toy hit the floor, yelling at me for picking her up and protecting her when she was obviously out to get you.

That was what you kept insisting, as they grew bigger, that Junko had it out for you and was encouraging her sister to do the same. It baffled me, I never saw any sort of open hostility from either girl toward you, yet you treated them as if they were unwanted guests instead of your own flesh and blood. It was exhausting for me, and at the time, I thought it was for them too. How could they live in a house with an angry, crazy woman all the time?

When they were a year and a half old, Junko graduated from destroying her own toys to going after other things - she tore and stained shirts, mixed and cracked makeup, squeezed conditioner all over the floor and eviscerated shoes. As time passed, it was clear that Junko was only interested in things that belonged to you - she ignored my shoes, my shirts, my shaving cream and cologne, but she would take the soles off your shoes, tear all the buttons off your dress shirts and fill your perfume jar with dirty toilet water. And in every escapade, Mukuro was her partner in crime, finding a way to access a blade no matter how I hid them.

“She hates me!” you would screech, holding up yet another ruined item, “She’s targeting me on purpose, the little devil!”

“She’s a child, of course she’s interested in taking things apart,” I would say, quickly picking up both girls in case you intended to harm them.

“She’s turning her sister against me,” you would wail, pointing an accusing finger at Junko, who would just tilt her head or suck her thumb, staring up at you with wide, innocent eyes.

I thought you were insane, hating your own children for such trivial reasons. We were rich, Shizuko, we could buy you a thousand shoes if you wanted, and even if the twins ruined them all, I could afford to get you a thousand more. So why were you losing it, why were you pinning the blame on Junko and only Junko?

All children were messy and destructive - some friends likened them to teething puppies that tore up drywall and “redesigned” entire rooms. In comparison, Junko and Mukuro were not as bad - at least they were not trying to put everything into their mouths or scrawling over our nice white walls with permanent marker.

“She controls her sister,” you had said, “Mukuro does everything she tells her to do.”

“They’re _babies_ , Shizuko, what is wrong with you? Not everything they do is a personal attack!”

Often, that would make you start ranting, angrily listing off things you perceived as intentional wrongs that they had done to you. Mukuro still refused to cry, to acknowledge you, and she rarely would eat despite her weight. Junko still threw your milk back at you in defiance, or spilled the baby food all over the floor, laughing as she smashed the little plastic containers across the room.

“Why would they do that?” To be honest, I never really believed you for a moment. The twins were ravenously hungry when I fed them, and the only problem I had with feeding them was trying to keep Junko from snatching the spoon or jar from me and inhaling everything on her own.

Yes, Mukuro’s lack of engagement could be frustrating, but I was starting to get through to her - sometimes, when her guard was down, she would glance up at the sound of me calling her name, though she would immediately look away pointedly, as if embarrassed by her slip up. All she needed was patience, and it seemed back then that you had not an ounce of it in you, so you decided to pin the blame on them instead.

“They want me to seem like a bad mother!”

“You are a bad mother! What mother comes up with conspiracy theories for babies barely 18 months old?”

Really, it was so hard to believe a word you said about the girls because of how prejudiced and outlandish it all sounded. How could children so young have the willpower and knowledge to do such a thing, to sabotage their mother? They were babies, all babies know how to do is cry, eat, shit and put things in their mouths!

Of course Junko would take interest in her mother’s things, even if her mother was a nutjob. She was a girl, she would naturally be attracted to girl’s things! That’s what I kept telling you, that it was natural for our twin _girls_ to want to know more about _girly stuff,_ so you should stop taking things so personally.

Sputtering in indignation, you asked why I kept taking their side - I could hardly believe what I was hearing. Side - they did not even make any sort of argument, there was no way they would be old enough to. Did you expect me to stand by you and yell at defenseless babies?

“They’re _babies_ , do they even have a side?” They could not even speak, which was strange for their age, but they seemed healthy enough and I did not want to put any more pressure on them to learn. I wanted to protect them, to help them, to give them a better home than the one they had now, and I had no idea how much longer I was willing to tolerate your nonsense.

After all, you seemed to be creating a stressful environment for them - Junko was starting to flinch at the sight of you, and Mukuro would tense up like a board if she so much as heard you in the next room. It was a wonder that they still dared to play, with you making them so uncomfortable.

I was tempted to send them to my mother, you know, even if just for a few days. Maybe they would be happier without you, but I did not want to leave them. I could move over with them, but I knew it would only make you feel more abandoned, and that would only make you hate them more.

So I stayed, I endured, and so did they, hoping that one day you would wake up and feel what a mother should for her children. They were my daughters, the apple of my eye and the warmth in my mother's heart - everyone who met them was taken by how sweet Junko was and how well-behaved Mukuro looked. You were the only one dreaming up monsters, the only one claiming that they were mean, starving themselves by choice and all those other things. Meanwhile, my mother said they were a pleasure to have, when she came over to babysit, and my brother said seeing how angelic they were made him less afraid of starting a family of his own.

It was unthinkable to me that you could not find it in your heart to love such perfect babies, and even if they had not been perfect, that should not have stopped you. So many mothers have loved and cared for disabled, sickly or crippled children, so why couldn't you? You carried them in your body for nine months, you brought them into the world…

Maybe that was why you hate them so much. Because you felt that you were responsible for putting these monsters on the planet.

 

Enoshima Akihisa

 

* * *

 

 

Dear Shizuko,

 

They’re telling such horrible lies about the girls, you know. The Future Foundation, what do they gain making Junko seem worse than she actually is? It only makes everyone fear her more, even if she was supposedly defeated, and it makes those who see her as some sort of despair goddess worship her even more. How is that going to help them, are they trying to paint Naegi Makoto as more of a hero by showing how slim his odds were?

Pfft, I know my girls, and his odds were so large, I could've rolled my father's body through it. And he needed two coffins to be put together when he was buried, because he couldn't possibly fit into one!

“Her first word was despair,” they claim, what bullshit! It was close enough, I suppose, it was her despair, but her first word had not been _zetsubou,_ it was probably not a word she had even heard of back then.

 

They were two years old when they first spoke, basically one after another. It had been a slow summer evening, and you had plopped the twins in front of some children’s programming on the television while I was away at work. You did that a lot, didn’t you? You didn’t tell me, you pretended that you had played with them, but Junko was too restless for your lies to work, and the television was always warm when I touched it.

You were ignoring them, hoping that they would get consumed by mindless entertainment, and if they were any ordinary babies they probably would have been. But Junko, intelligent, easily-bored Junko, was done with the simple plots of infant’s programming before they even revealed the problem.

When I came home, Junko was angrily kicking at her baby chair, twisting and yowling like a trapped cat. Distraught, Mukuro was straining in her own chair, having cracked the plastic in her efforts to aid her sister, and I quickly swooped in to pick them both up and set them safely onto the floor.

“Hello, Junko. What are you watching?” I asked, settling down between them and placing one hand on each child's back.

She frowned, pointing at the screen and making an angry noise Meanwhile, Mukuro was attempting to scale my legs to get to her sister, grabbing tiny fistfuls of my trousers as she struggled not to trip.

“Mukuro, sit down,” I chide gently, trying to hide my anger - considering how restless and upset they were, there was no way they had only watched “a little” television. You had probably trapped them in those chairs so you would not have to worry about them wandering as you neglected them all day. Had you even fed them?

Mukuro shook her head fiercely, agitated by her sister’s agitation.

_“Junko.”_

I froze, and you dropped whatever you were holding in the kitchen with a gasp. Aside from the time she cried in relief when they were reunited, I had never heard Mukuro’s voice before, and now she was speaking her first word.

“Junko’s right here,” I recovered quickly, lifting Mukuro up and plonking her next to her twin, “See? She’s fine.”

Ignoring me, Mukuro rested a hand on her sister’s shoulder and repeated, “Junko.”

It was surprising, how much concern could be in a single name, and Junko relaxed at the sound of it. Lowering her hand, Junko turned to her sister, then to the television, then to me, and back to her sister again.

 _“Tsumannai,”_ she whined, pointing at the screen once more.

First Mukuro, and now Junko - they had spoken their first words in the same order as they were born. Taking a few moments to overcome my shock, I asked her, “What’s boring, the television?”

Junko nodded, crossing her arms with a huff, and as I turned off the television, pride and a little bit of relief radiating off me, you remained stiff and silent in the kitchen. I had been appalled by your reaction - what mother would not rush to get a camera, or rush to her children’s sides, when they did something as momentous as say their first words? You were already apathetic to their first steps, the least you could do was try to make up for that.

Looking back on it now, knowing what I know and having seen what I’ve seen, I guess I can understand why you reacted that way.

You were terrified, because you understood what those first words meant. Unlike me, you had seen the darkness within them, and you knew what was coming.

You knew…

That their lives had been decided by those first words.

 

_Junko._

_Tsumannai._

 

So yes, just like those Future Foundation idiots said, the twins’ lives were decided by their first words. But they had gotten it wrong - Junko was not consumed by despair from the moment she was born. Or, well, maybe she had been, but at that age she did not quite yet know the word. She had been bored, and that boredom was what led her to destroy the world.

And Mukuro… well, even before her first word, it was obvious that she would die for her sister. She came into the world apathetic toward everything, intrigued only by her sister and maybe the rare knife. _Junko_ \- even before she had been given that name, Mukuro had been devoted to her.

Maybe I should call the Future Foundation, correct them - if they are going to slander my daughters, they could at least do it with the truth.

What do you think?

 

Enoshima Akihisa


	3. Chapter 3

Dear Shizuko,

 

A stray cat came into the yard yesterday, Shizuko. A stray cat - do you know what that means? It has been years since any animal has been seen alive on the street; maybe society is starting to recover from the nuclear bomb that was our Junko.

She had a cat like that once, with the same white, orange and black markings, whatever it is that cat lovers call them. One of our neighbors’ cats had a litter, and she gave the twins one for their third birthday, since she’d seen them running after her cat in the yard.

I had thought it adorable, Junko was beaming from ear to ear and even Mukuro looked a little… softer, acknowledging the adorable little bundle of fur instead of pretending it didn’t exist. Hopefully, the little creature would help her learn that there was more to life than her sister, that there were other beautiful, warm things aside from Junko that would love her and seek her company.

The scene was almost angelic, two little dark haired girls bent over a kitten, utterly besotted by its soft, warm fur and large eyes. Unfortunately, you shattered it the moment the neighbors closed their front door.

“We shouldn’t leave them alone with the poor thing,” you hissed, eyes flitting between Junko and the kitten, “I saw that look in her eyes, Akihisa, I know it. She’s going to hurt it.”

I rolled my eyes, feeling that familiar twinge of annoyance that would rapidly morph into rage. As Junko rolled around in the grass, the kitten clambering over her as her sister watched, I said, “Don’t ruin this day too, Shizuko.”

You wanted to protest, I could see it in your eyes, but before you could, Junko had sat up and whispered something into her sister’s ear. In a flash, Mukuro pulled a bright pink, plastic water pistol seemingly out of thin air and blasted you in the face.

I chuckled faintly at the sight, the kitten sniffing curiously at the barrel and clambering into Mukuro’s lap. Absently, she stroked it, her fingers intertwining with Junko’s in the little thing’s fur.

“What did you put in that gun?” you sputtered, rapidly walking over to them.

Mukuro put herself between you and her sister without a moment’s hesitation, the kitten falling off her lap with a squeak of surprise. She was like a prey animal in that sense, picking up the slightest hint of danger, but instead of running away from it, she threw herself in headfirst.

Startled, I grabbed you by the arm and pulled you back sharply, just before you could touch her, calling your name warningly.

Junko answered for her sister, her voice tremulous, “T-the water that smells…”

She was right, when I drew closer to you I could smell it, quite strongly - it was bleach. They started doing that a few weeks ago, Junko ordering Mukuro to shoot at people she thought looked or acted strange, and there had not been a single situation where the liquid had been water. Still, it had never been something as dangerous as bleach - half the time it was milk, orange juice, the drinks I put in their sippy cups - once, she got to that bottle of expensive wine you swore you put up on the top shelf.

“Go wash up, dear. I’ll let them know bleach isn’t a toy,” I said, hoping to avoid another complete meltdown and yelling match.

Unfortunately for me, you became hysterical anyway, pointing an accusing finger at the girls, “They know that! It was intentional, the little monsters were trying to kill me!”

I had quickly waved the girls inside, not wanting them to get caught up in yet another fight between us. Nervously, Junko scooped up the kitten, her eyes watery as she asked if it was her fault that you were angry again.

With a few whispered reassurances, I sent her back into the house, waiting until they were out of sight before I turned back to you. Again, you had ruined a perfectly nice day, and the girls’ birthday at that - what kind of mother were you? I was furious, and it was the first time I ever struck you when I slapped you across the face.

Why couldn’t you restrain your craziness for just one day? You made our lives a living hell with your volatile moods, with the way you made the house feel like a giant pressure cooker. You had finally gotten Mukuro to react to your presence, yes, but she reacted by baring her teeth like a cornered dog, putting herself between you and Junko every single time you were in the same room.

How long did I need to subject my own daughters to this torture, to living with a woman who is more like a predator than a mother?

“Did you see the look on her face?” I shouted as you reeled, clutching your face in what I assume was surprise and anger. “She’s three years old today, Shizuko, and she thinks it’s her fault her mother is insane.”

“Those are crocodile tears!” you yelled in return, starting to cry yourself, “She knows how to manipulate you! She’s evil, why can’t you see it?”

Again, almost every single time some new development came up with the twins, you’d call Junko evil. It was so tiring to have to repeat the same thing, over and over again; I was tempted to ask you to get out of my house.

Taking a deep breath, I steadied myself, “I said not today, Shizuko.”

“Then when do you want to talk about it? When your precious daughter is covered in my blood and my throat is open?”

Did you even think of the words you had been saying, how illogical and delusional they would sound to me? Even if Junko had been a strange, cruel child in my presence, saying a three year old would potentially slit your throat would be way beyond my imagination. I doubted that Junko even knew how to hold a knife - Mukuro, on the other hand, seemed to have a knack for every weapon she could lay her skinny little hands on.

“Say another word, Shizuko, and you can find somewhere else to sleep tonight.” My voice was edged with steel, ice cold with my anger.

I would have really kicked you out of the house had you protested the way you obviously wanted to; but before you could make a sound, an agonized shriek came from inside the house. Startled, I rushed for the door as the sound came again, cutting off abruptly as I stumbled into the hall.

Just around the bend, near the little spare room you had been sleeping in since we started fighting, were the girls. Junko was on her knees, leaning forward, her eyes shining with childlike curiosity and innocence that contrasted horribly with the gruesome scene: Mukuro, soaked in blood, a knife in one tiny hand, the other braced against the blood-slick floor, the kitten’s body splayed before her. It had been cleanly opened from throat to tail, its internal organs cut out and neatly set aside, the work of some amateur veterinarian.  


“Mukuro!” I shouted her name in horror, but she remained unresponsive, her face passive, as if she were staring blankly past yet another expensive toy I had gotten for her. “What did you do?”

Rushing over, I pried the knife from her fingers, surprised by the strength of her grip - where did a stick-thin three year old get that kind of power from? Mukuro’s only reaction was to go rigid to display her resentment at my intrusion, and I turned to Junko instead to hopefully get some answers.

Behind me, you had lost it at the sight of blood, screaming like you had been possessed. Junko had shut down at the sound, curling into her sister’s side with a whine, and I shouted at you to shut up or get out. I needed to talk to them, to figure out why this had happened, and I definitely did not want to jump to conclusions and start calling them demon spawn.  


“She’s evil, don’t you see?!” you refused to stop, though you remained at the doorway, too afraid to approach your own children. “I told you she’d kill it, I told you and you didn’t listen to me! I was right!”

“Shizuko, get out. Right now.” Refusing to let you protest, I strode over, shoving you out the door and slamming it shut. I had other things to deal with, and two bloodied, confused three year olds were much easier to handle than an insane wife.  


Turning back, I knelt in front of the girls, averting my eyes from the kitten’s dead body as I asked, “Junko, do you know why Mukuro did this?”

Junko nodded quietly, resting a small hand on Mukuro’s bloody knee and squeezing. As if it were a sign or order of some sort, Mukuro immediately answered me, her voice mechanical and flat, “Junko-chan said it would make her happy.”

“Happy?” Confused, I turned to Junko for an answer, determined not to buy into your story of primal evil. She was three years old, there had to be a logical reason for her actions, however strange they might have been.

“I just… wanted to know how the toy worked…” Junko was crying again, and Mukuro wrapped an arm around her while glaring at me, the first direct gaze I had been awarded from her.

“Toy?” Oh, did she think the kitten was another one of those mechanical toys I had bought her, the ones she and Mukuro had taken apart completely? They were curious little things, and Junko somehow figured out how to tell her sister to put it back together after staring at it and the box for maybe thirty minutes. “Junko, that cat was not a toy.”

“Not…” her tiny face scrunched up in confusion, “Not a toy?”

As much as I wanted to drop them both in a bath and scrub the blood off the floor immediately, I took a deep breath and sat down, instead, drawing them into my lap. Mukuro made a little growl at the contact, but allowed herself to be subject to the embrace as long as she was tucked safely against her sister’s side.

Patiently, I explained to them about life, about how that kitten had been something like us, and it was never a good thing to hurt another living being. It had made those screaming sounds in pain, the same way Junko would cry when she scraped her knee on a rock (Mukuro never cried, so it hardly applied to her), and all the red stuff that came out of it was similar to the stuff that came out of her own wounds. Life was fragile, precious, and one should never play around with a life, even if it was something much smaller than we were, because it was just as important.  


“I… hurt it?” Junko’s face crumpled, and Mukuro showed her displeasure at what I did by kicking -  _ hard  _ \- at the inside of my thigh.

“Mukuro, stop that,” I scolded, lifting her up, and the moment her skin was separated from Junko’s she fell limp, like a rag doll. The sudden shift in weight made my arms hurt, and I quickly lowered her again as I said, “It’s okay, Junko, you didn’t understand. But next time, please ask Papa before you try to take anything apart. Okay?”

Grabbing on to Mukuro, she nodded, burying her face in the back of her sister’s shirt. “I will, Papa.”

“That’s my good girl.”

If only I could see through that watery, nervous smile she gave me, if only I could see the sinister light in her pale blue eyes that ruined the innocent image, if only I could understand Mukuro's distant, business-like aloofness, that meant Junko was fully aware of her actions and the consequences before she gave her order...  


But no, all I could feel was furious, on my knees cleaning the blood off the floor as you ranted, saying that they picked your room on purpose to gut the little thing as some sort of warning. Clouded by my fury, my love, my protectiveness, I completely overlooked the warning signs, letting Junko patter back into the room to examine the now-clean floors with a far-too-amused look on her face without a second thought.

But you knew, you saw her for what she was, and I’m sure the animals could too. Because ever since that day, every animal they met would shy away from them, fleeing the other way as soon as they could.

Yet I couldn’t see it, couldn’t see past the sweet smiles, the silent armor. Like the rest of the world, I was fooled until it was too late.

Where was I trying to go with this? Another memory, another half-hearted attempt at averting an apology while claiming guilt for what I’ve done. I wonder if you’d even want to read any of this, to remember anything about the girls. Maybe you do, if only just to tell me “I told you so.”

And you did, didn’t you? You did, so many times.

 

Enoshima Akihisa


	4. Chapter 4

Dear Shizuko, 

 

The Future Foundation ran another “informative program” about Junko today, talking about the brainwashing that they did to the Preparatory School and of the tragedies committed by her supposed generals, the other members of SHSL Despair. It was supposed to help people look out for signs of other, brainwashed remnants of despair that had somehow escaped the Future Foundation’s notice, as well as to root out corrupted civilians in their own ranks - “to eradicate Enoshima Junko’s despair” was how they put it.

They warned that though the threat was greatly lessened now that Junko and Mukuro were gone, their influence lingered - Junko had been as terrifying as she was not because she was a murderer, but because she controlled murderers, filling their heads with her despair.

I could agree with them on that, at the very least. Junko had never really dirtied her own hands, because she had never really needed to. Even before she made servants out of her hapless schoolmates, Junko always had one by her side - her sister. If she wanted something done, she just needed to say it, and Mukuro would make sure it happened. She was a puppetmaster, our little girl, and the first puppet she had ever used had been given to her at birth.

The first time Junko asked for a human’s blood was when they were four. I’d sent them to a private daycare, the most prestigious one I could find that wasn’t smack-dab in the middle of Tokyo itself, both to give them a headstart on their education and to keep them away from you as much as possible. For the first time, the twins had access to dozens of people, and Junko charmed them almost immediately.

The boy’s name had been something fairly normal, the forgettable type, something like Tanaka or Yamada or Ishida or the like. Small, with a round face and round glasses, he looked fairly harmless, the average, bookish type that would someday be the pride of his family taking medicine at Tokyo University - you know them. Fairly bland, quiet, pale and skinny, the kind of boy that would get shoved aside on the playground, the ones girls overlook and teachers absolutely adore.

Junko started mentioning him with an annoyed huff after the first two weeks of daycare, complaining that he was getting too close to her, trying to talk to her all the time and butting in when she was coloring. He’d make excuses to take her crayons, to look at her drawings and include himself into her conversations, and Junko didn’t like it. Mukuro didn’t, either, her gaze turned to ice when Junko so much as said his name.

For a while, I tried to convince her that he was being friendly, that it didn’t hurt to share her space with somebody aside from Mukuro. Her teacher loved her, her other classmates always wanted to play with her, and I hoped that if she made enough friends, she could spend even more time away from you.

“Get him to stop,” she’d finally grumbled, a week later, tugging on my shirt sleeve with a pout, “I really don’t like him, Papa. I tried.”

“Don’t worry, Junko, Papa will handle it,” I had reassured her, trying to hide a smile - I had been amused back then, that my little girl was so beautiful she was already drawing the boys in at that age. She had an air about her, that innate charisma that would serve her when she took advantage of people later in life, that attracted people like moths to a flame.

I put in a quick call to the school, reassuring the teacher that it was nothing big, just a boy being a little annoying, and if she could just make sure he didn’t get disruptive. She had laughed, too, warning me that there were a handful of other boys who also liked Junko to a degree, and promised to try her best to keep them away.

I had a popular little butterfly on my hands, she told me, and soon enough I’d be fending boys off my doorstep with a bat. Proud and amused, I had agreed with a laugh, unaware of how serious the problem would become.

For two days, everything was fine, Junko had no complaints and I assumed that the teacher had managed to keep the boy’s unwanted advances at bay. Unfortunately, I overestimated the lone woman’s ability to watch over so many young children, underestimated the persistence of the little boy and mistook the reason for Junko’s silence.

She was not complaining anymore not because the matter was settled, but because she had decided to settle it herself. Or well, settle it with her sister.

 

Halfway through a normal, peaceful Monday, I received a phone call from a very distraught teacher, children crying and screaming in the background as she struggled to explain to me the situation. Initially, I had panicked, thinking something bad had happened at the daycare, maybe even to my girls, but I soon realized that they were the  _ cause _ of the entire situation.

During their lunch break, the boy had approached Junko again, while the teacher was busy trying to pull a pair of boys from each other’s throats. Probably unimpressed by the adults’ inability to handle the issue, Junko promptly decided to take matters into her own sister’s capable hands.

She probably touched Mukuro’s knee - in their early years, while they were still entangled together physically as closely as they were spiritually, that was the sign that Junko would always use. And the moment that happened… well, Mukuro knew exactly what she needed to do.

According to the other kids, Mukuro hadn’t said a word as she rose, pulling a brick out of thin air and proceeding to smash it repeatedly into the boy’s face.

He screamed, the other kids screamed, but Mukuro did not falter in the slightest. Her little face devoid of emotion, she continued calmly attacking him. The teacher had been horrified, not that I could blame them - Mukuro’s violence was off-putting, especially in a child her age. It was not the common, emotional tantrum type that one would expect, but detached, cold and businesslike, the kind you’d see from professionals who killed for a living.

After their cries fell on expectedly deaf ears, the teacher decided to pry Mukuro off him, though it took both her and the teacher of another class to do it. All the while, the boy had been wailing and begging for forgiveness, and Junko had watched with what they described as meek, wide-eyed silence.

His parents were, understandably, absolutely livid that Junko’s sister did this to him - he had been waxing lyrical about “Junko-chan” at home, giving them the impression that they were close. And even though they weren’t, I couldn’t allow Mukuro to go around beating up overeager boys in her sister’s stead, or so I had thought.

The boy’s parents were the hysterical, overprotective type, all but physically shaking Mukuro as they screamed at her for her actions in the clinic, their sobbing little boy all bandaged up and lying on the doctor’s table. By the time I got there, they were reaching the end of their rant, their faces purple with fury.

She didn’t acknowledge them, of course she wouldn’t, staring blankly through them as if they were made of air. Mukuro was really good at that, I was pretty sure she could sit in the middle of a major earthquake and pretend nothing was going on.

“Finally,” the boy’s mother had said, throwing her hands up, “You decided to help us, Enoshima-san.”

Ignoring her, I turned to the teacher, who told me that they tried every trick in the book but Mukuro wouldn’t even make eye contact. They had separated the girls, since Junko didn’t seem to have anything to do with it, and were surprised when I asked for her to be brought in right away.

They were even more surprised when I picked up little, angelic-looking Junko and asked, “Junko, why did Mukuro do what she did?”

“Why don’t you ask her yourself? She’s sitting right there!” The boy’s father had asked stupidly, as if they thought Mukuro would respond to me any more than she did with them.

Ignoring them, I repeated my question to Junko in a gentler tone, trying to reassure her that everything would be alright if she answered honestly. She never reacted well to shouting or hysterics, which I assumed were due to the trauma you had caused her.

“He was annoying,” Junko huffed, her tone accusing, “Papa, you said you’d make him go away.”

“I’m sorry about that,” I said, gently pulling her closer so that I could look her in the eyes. “But that isn’t an excuse to attack someone.”

“Big sis knew I was upset,” she said softly, starting to shake a little, “She wanted to help. She didn’t do anything wrong!”

There were tears of frustration and indignation in her eyes - Junko genuinely believed that they had done nothing wrong in trying to smash a boy’s face in. It was probably because of how often Mukuro had to physically leap to Junko’s defense back home that she found it ordinary, but I knew how badly that reflected on us as a family.

Mukuro snapped upright, tense and rigid, fixing me with that icy stare that warned me:  _ one more wrong word, and the next brick goes in your face _ . Junko reached out for her a moment later, and that ice melted from her spine like ice-cream in a microwave as she opened her arms to welcome her baby sister.

“As you can see,” I said, trying to keep a straight face, “Mukuro is very protective over her sister, and her intentions had no malice.”

“She didn’t have to keep hitting our son after he apologized!”

To be honest, I doubt his words even registered in her head, but it isn’t something I can easily explain. How do you tell them that your eldest daughter was selectively deaf, blind and mute to anything that wasn’t her younger sister?

“Well, I do admit th-”

The boy’s mother cut me off, continuing to rant about how her poor baby’s face might be disfigured, that his nose might never heal straight and the scars his glasses made on his cheeks and forehead might never fade. Mukuro was a monster, she needed to be expelled, and as her attack on Mukuro’s character continued, Junko’s face turned a funny color.

Suddenly, she leapt from my arms, tears streaming down her little cheeks as she kicked the woman in the shin, shouting, “Shut up, you fat, ugly grandma!”

Startled, we all gaped at her for a moment - Junko rarely displayed extreme emotion, and she had never behaved this disrespectfully to an adult before.

Even Mukuro was taken aback, her voice soft and soothing as she called, “Junko, it’s alright. I don’t care.”

“But I do!”

Looking back, even now I believe that Junko’s protectiveness and anger had been sincere, that she had really been affected by the words they had called the sister she adored. Even though she ended up using harsher, icier words against Mukuro, eventually staining her hands with her blood, I know: Junko never once, not for a moment, stopped loving her.

Fortunately for me, it was that love that made the incident easy to settle. Realizing that they had gone overboard attacking a child, the boy’s parents had apologized and agreed to take their boy to another school, to keep him away from my daughters, and all I had to do in exchange was pay for his medical expenses. It would be easy enough to settle, and I could easily keep the matter from you - which, until now, I did.

I thought that they had been traumatized enough - Junko by the yelling match at the clinic and Mukuro by her sister’s heartbroken face - that they didn’t need any more from you. They’d learned their lesson, I was sure, Mukuro would not do something like that to get both herself and her beloved sister into trouble ever again.

 

I didn’t know, back then, that we had all been fooled, that Mukuro would never, ever attack someone, no matter how much she wanted to, if there was no order given to do it beforehand. Even if someone was a clear threat to her sister, even if someone was hurting her sister, Mukuro would not draw blood until she was told to.

She was an attack dog, through and through, so loyal that she would hold her position, bite her tongue and swallow her emotions and instincts for Junko’s sake. She might have wanted to go after that boy and smash his face in, but on her own, she would never have done it. Junko had to instruct her, or else she would be content letting that anger bottle up inside her.

If I had told you, you would’ve known straightaway, wouldn’t you? But that wouldn’t have changed a thing.

 

Enoshima Akihisa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the comments and kudos! I'm very happy to see that there are people who enjoy such a self-indulgent thing I am writing.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the support and kindness! I'm sorry I haven't been the most consistent with my updates T.T Please be patient with me.

Dear Shizuko,

 

Someone from the Future Foundation has decided to turn the only hole-free building in our district into a school, and today, the first young survivors have walked by my door in mismatched uniforms, smiling from ear to ear. It is so strange, how something as dreaded as school becomes desirable in a time of war - we really do not appreciate the goodness of things until we lose it.

But that is beside the point. A school, even if it is open to absolutely any survivor under the age of 18, is still a strange, almost horrifying thing, and would probably remain that way for years to come. Kibougamine’s tragedy will echo down every hallway, bounce off every reinforced Student Council Room, float around the metal detectors and security checks made mandatory outside every school building, even if Junko’s influence fades.

Despite that, the youngsters seemed happy enough with whatever program was going on inside - I wouldn’t be surprised if they had some ex-SHSL teacher or counselor or whatever in there running the show. There was even a brief moment of laughter, a tinkle of bells in the smoky air, like a distant dream floating through the ruined streets.

And to think, not too long ago, Junko had been just like them. Smiling, a little confused, in her shiny new elementary school uniform, holding onto Mukuro’s hand as they walked up the steps and into their new school.

It pains me to remember the way they were, happy, bright-eyed and innocent; if I had done better for them, if I had not insisted on being a fool, they would have been so much more than mass murderers.

There hadn’t been many mishaps after Yamada/Ishida/Tanaka was transferred; Junko and Mukuro both proved intelligent enough to excel in the daycare’s environment and while their social skills were still a little lackluster, everything else seemed fine. Classes were a breeze for Junko, who even decided to get her own headstart by reading all the psychology books and psychopath biographies you had left lying around the house.

Of course, you still got on Junko’s case, and my nerves, at home over the littlest things - Junko leaving the window open in the middle of the night in winter was “a plot to freeze you to death”, Mukuro refusing to eat any food that you touched was “a sign of rebellion from her sister” - stupid things like that. The twins had stopped looking so hurt by your rejections, which should have alarmed me, but instead, I had felt relief.

They no longer expected from you things a child would ask of a mother - love, warmth, concern, a bond of any sort. When they were at home and I was not, they were isolated in their own little world, trying to block out the sound of your curses. And the moment I returned, Junko would come smiling up to me and tell me all about her day, about what she’d learned and the mechanical toys Mukuro had helped her figure out, and Mukuro would smile seeing her sister so animated.

It was easier for them, tuning you out, because if they expected nothing they would not be disappointed when you failed to provide.

It was a simple, sweet time, and I truly believe even now that it had not been an act. Yes, they were insane, they were full of hate for the world they had been brought into, but even then there was a part of them that wanted to smile.

If only I had kept it alive, if I had taken them away from you sooner. Your negativity fed them, and my stupidity and pride encouraged their wounds to fester, and I only noticed the extent of the damage when she did something irreversible.

As their elementary school was the most prestigious and expensive private school I could get my hands on, the rest of Junko’s classmates were obviously the rich, pampered children of tycoons, celebrities and a few yakuza clans. Among them was a weak, pale-faced boy, the youngest child and only son of one of the richest families in Japan.

His family put a lot of pressure on him to succeed his father, as he was the miracle son that had arrived ten years after the family’s last child. His father had resigned himself to his three daughters, trying to train the eldest in his ways, but the moment his son was born, everything changed. It was obviously too much weight for such a little boy to bear, and that was what I tried to believe caused him to do what he did.

But I know better now.

Junko was a bright child, too bright for her age, and she knew how to make it seem like she had minimal involvement in the whole plot. While the other children played and talked and compared exotic holidays to Europe or America, Junko met with the boy, Tsuji, out of sight of teachers, classmates and security cameras alike.

Even back then, Junko had a knack for sniffing out despair, for beelining on the weakest minds that were already starting to crumble and giving them a helpful shove. Tsuji, overwhelmed by his family’s desires and the hateful glares of his sisters, was exactly what she was looking for.

Slowly, she poisoned him, leading him to believe that his parents saw him as nothing but a puppet and that his sisters longed to kill him, so that they would be able to inherit the family company for themselves. The atmosphere of his home only served to prove Junko’s words right, and Tsuji withdrew deeper and deeper into himself, unwilling to trust anyone but Junko and, to an extent, Mukuro.

Eventually, little Tsuji allowed Junko to convince him that he had to kill his family before they killed him, and that it was the only way he could truly live as himself. With Mukuro’s help, the boy got his hands on two brand new bottles of bleach, and well…

It did not go very well.

While bleach was deadly, of course, there needed to be a certain dosage to kill. Fortunately enough, most of Tsuji’s siblings were big enough that they only required a lengthy hospital stay after he poisoned their food. However, the youngest of his sisters, 16 year old Tsukiko, was not quite as lucky as the rest.

It was a horrible thing for the city to wake up to, a six year old boy attempting murder on his entire family. He was crying over their slumped bodies when the teacher found him, having gone to his house to check on his unexplained absence from class; crying and laughing like a madman.

“It had to be done,” he was reported to have said, rocking himself repeatedly, “It had to be done, it had to be done…”

It was a breakdown of spectacular proportions, stunning the child psychiatrist that had been assigned to get some proper answers out of him. Tsuji had completely snapped, he was possibly schizophrenic, and the only thing of substance they got from him was that it was Enoshima Junko who opened his eyes to the evils of his family.

Concerned, the psychiatrist immediately requested a follow-up with Junko, which you eagerly agreed to. You said that finally, someone would be able to prove how evil our little girl was, and that you could not wait to see her put behind bars for her crime.

I was furious - she was your own daughter, and one that had barely passed her seventh birthday at that. How could you be so willing to paint her black, just because of the baseless words of a crazy boy?

“If you’re so confident that she’s innocent, then let them test her!” you had yelled, “She’ll come back clean, and you can finally prove to me that I’m the crazy one!”

“This Tsuji kid is the crazy one, and he’s blaming our girl for no reason! Why are you going along with it?” I was furious at you for not being more protective over your own child, but I guess… part of me was also afraid of what the result would be.

Junko was no normal child, that much was obvious. I was certain that she had been emotionally damaged and stunted in some way, though I was pretty sure that it was your fault. I did not want them prying into our dysfunctional family and publically revealing that Akabane Shizuko was absolutely insane and had ruined not only her own children, but those of another family.

Despite my protests, and all the kids swearing that Junko never talked to Tsuji, though Tsuji sometimes tried to chase after her in the halls and Mukuro shoved him off, the school decided to keep a closer eye on her anyway. Junko, too, insisted that she had not said more than two words to Tsuji, and she was only being polite with him when she had to.

The school’s security cameras supported Junko’s claims, and obviously, so did Mukuro, who was always glued to her side. After a few weeks of completely normal behavior, they decided that a psychiatrist’s visit was no longer necessary and decided to devote everything they had to fixing that poor little boy.

It didn’t work out, of course, our Junko’s tamperings were relatively permanent. When Tsuji was released into his parents’ care once more at the age of eight, after showing good behavior, everything came to an end.

He set the family house on fire, killing himself, his mother and both his remaining sisters, his father escaping with burns across half his face. It was a horrible tragedy, I thought, but you were adamant that Junko was the cause of it, even though Tsuji had not been within shouting distance of her for more than a year. The Internet was not an option either, since I had their use of it monitored, and none of the children had a phone. There was no way Junko could have influenced him in any way.

Or so we thought.

I would not be surprised if they found proof that Junko had somehow communicated with him while he was in the hospital, making use of Mukuro’s rapidly growing list of skills to stay under the radar. No one, not even you, had thought to mention Mukuro’s role in the entire operation, and that might have let to the downfall of Tsuji and his entire family.

I wonder… will the world be unlucky enough to have children like our girls born again? Would any of those children walking, laughing by the front door, turn into another Junko? Would there be enough support for them, the children sullied by despair, to prevent them from turning out just like she did?

I sincerely hope so. This hate-mongering program the Future Foundation is on will help no one - those tempted by despair do not need to be alienated any further than they are. They need help, they need love, they need to have their concerns taken seriously…

Something I had failed for so many years to do, for you and our girls.

 

Enoshima Akihisa

 

* * *

 

Dear Shizuko,

 

I was rooting around in the basement again. I have been doing that a lot, recently, since there’s nothing left of my family but whatever is in those boxes. Medals, photographs, newspaper clippings and glossy old magazines of the first photoshoot Junko ever modeled for or the first military magazine Mukuro’s articles appeared in…

I cannot let the Future Foundation hear of any of this, can I? They would want it all destroyed, they would claim that any remnants of my children’s existences would trigger another worldwide, despair-fueled meltdown.

If that were the case, you young hotheads, then maybe the problem lies not with my children, but with your ruined, angry world? Are you listening to their voices, you elite, privileged few, or are you too busy freaking out about Junko to really help the world like you claim to be doing? You, who live in a castle in the clouds, could never understand those of us who crawl on the ground.

Back to the point, before I turn this letter into an angry criticism of our wonderful Hope Overlords and get myself thrown in jail. Being the father of Enoshima Junko and Ikusaba Mukuro is bad enough for me, looking like a sympathizer is likely to have me killed.

I found the very first survival competition prize that Mukuro ever won - she had gotten first place on her very first try, a few weeks after the school dropped their High Alert on Junko. She had not really bothered about the contest when we first walked by the flyer, treating it with the same disinterest as the rest of the world, but when Junko said she thought it would be fun to cheer her sister on from the sidelines... 

If only the world could have seen the look in Mukuro’s eyes as she leapt at it, eyes burning with the love, the fury and the determination of a thousand stars. Then they would know how human Mukuro had been.

For the first time, she had looked me straight in the eye and spoke to me, her voice as calm and cool as she could make it, begging me to allow her to attend. I was understandably hesitant, it was an adult’s survival competition and Mukuro had not shown her innate ability for that sort of thing just yet. Eventually, I wore out, and she marched to the starting line that day as if she owned it.

When we drove home that evening, Mukuro humming contentedly as Junko stroked her hair, the brand new survival knife in her skinny hands, the girls had never been happier. Even you decided to cooperate that day - was it because it was Mukuro being praised, not Junko, and you welcomed any chance for interaction with your older daughter?

Regardless, it was a happy scene in our living room as you tried to engage with Mukuro, asking her where she would like her knife displayed. Almost pointedly, she ignored you, handing it over to Junko instead to let her decide. I was about to cut in, hoping to diffuse the situation, when the doorbell rang.

“I’ll be fine, dear, go answer it,” you had told me with a smile, and I decided to trust you for once.

The front door was just down the hall, and I would be able to hear any screaming matches that began and rush back to stop it. What could possibly go wrong?

Everything, I quickly learned. I was barely gone for three minutes when you screamed, and I rushed back inside to find Mukuro with her new knife embedded in her stomach, blood dripping from the wound as she stared on so impassively, it took a trained eye to detect the pain in her gray eyes.

As I rushed her to the hospital, leaving you behind to deal with our visitor - the very bewildered postman bringing yet another thing you had ordered - Junko quietly told me the story. Mukuro felt like she needed to prove to you that she was worthy of her title, since your tone felt condescending to her, as if she were a child who just won a prize for wading in a kiddy pool instead of a girl who had beaten adults three times her age in a survival contest. Hence, she took the knife from Junko, walked up to you and stabbed herself.

Mukuro agreed quietly on the backseat, her head on Junko’s lap as she took deep, steadying breaths, struggling not to flinch every time the car went over a bump in the road. Junko looked distraught, stroking her sister’s hair frantically and whispering sweet reassurances, and I never for a second suspected that she was the one who stabbed her sister.

After I returned from the hospital with an upset, lost Junko in tow, you pulled me aside and hissed that you had something important to say. Aware that Junko was tired and horrified by her forced separation from her twin, which I had saved her from in school with strict instructions to the administration, I sent her up to their room to save her the trouble.

“Junko stabbed Mukuro.”

“What?” my eyeballs practically popped out of my head at your accusation, “What makes you say that? You know how they ar-”

“I saw it with my own eyes, Akihisa,” you brought out my name, trying to sound pleading, but to me you were nothing but a madwoman.

Junko was in tears and shaking all over because she would have to spend a night without her sister, and I had to reassure her the entire drive home that there were no monsters under Mukuro’s hospital bed that would hurt her when we were away. What were you trying to say?

Taking my stunned disbelief as approval, you launched into your version of events, one that clearly contradicted what the twins had said earlier.

When I left, Junko had unsheathed the blade and tapped her chin with it, her eyes shining with that wickedness you had seen in her since the day she was born. Very slowly, in a deceptively sweet voice, she had asked you to make an important choice.

“I don’t know what to do, Mama,” Junko had supposedly said, “So I’ll let you choose for me!”

Frozen in nervous shock, you had hesitantly asked her what she needed help choosing between, making Junko light up.

“Easy!” her grin was practically dripping poison, you claimed, “A knife needs to draw blood. Should I stab big sister with this knife, or should I get big sister to stab you with this knife?”

You were torn, you said, unable to make a decision, and that was what I zeroed in on. If what you said was indeed true, how could you, a mother, not leap at the chance to defend your daughter? And your preferred daughter at that.

“If what you said is true, and I highly doubt it,” I had glared at you, folding my arms over my chest, “That means that you decided to save yourself over Mukuro.”

You protested, saying that Junko did not give you enough time to decide, that she had declared time up before you could hesitate for very long and stabbed her sister. Mukuro had not let out so much as a wheeze as the knife sunk into her thin, small body - the only whiff of truth in your story - and that was when you screamed.

“That you hesitated at all makes you a bad mother,” I spat at you, sick of your make-believe world of evil, “I do not want to hear another word of this, Shizuko. Ever again.”

Of course, you didn’t listen to me, and I should’ve taken you seriously. Even though there is no way to confirm what happened that day, knowing what I do now, I would not be surprised if you had been telling the truth.

But it’s too late to acknowledge all that.

 

Enoshima Akihisa


	6. Chapter 6

Dear Shizuko,

 

I was thinking about what other stories you told me that could have been true. Over the years, there have been too many to count, but there is one in particular that strikes out at me. Probably because I was in England at the time, fast asleep in my hotel, when a call from home shattered my peace.

It was the twins’ eighth birthday, the day that it happened. I was in London for a business trip for an entire week, leaving you to throw their party, and I had asked my sister to keep an eye on the whole event in case you tried something stupid. Who would’ve thought that she would come down with a terrible cold at the last minute?

That left you in charge of our girls, and the legion of friends, no,  _ fans _ , that Junko had amassed at school. I had taken her popularity as a good sign, but you were pretty sure she’d brainwashed them and would use them the way she had little Tsuji. Regardless of the true reason Junko had garnered them, there was no denying that our daughter was well-loved in school, and she had no shortage of friends trickling down to our doorstep to ask if Junko wanted to play.  


According to you, the party went off quite smoothly, the other children stuffing themselves with various sweets and snacks and gawking at the piles of toys Junko had abandoned. Junko played a perfect birthday girl, angelic and energetic, showing her fans around and taking part in various silly games with them. You had locked all the poisonous and dangerous items away just in case, so the most dangerous object in the house would probably be a fork, and you hoped that you could have a relaxing day celebrating the birth of children you regretted having.  


Everyone was smiling, laughing and generally having a great time, except for Mukuro. Understandably, our elder daughter shunned the idea of entertaining so many people who were not Junko, and retreated into herself as she followed a step behind Junko like a loyal dog. She would have been incredibly content with just that, with just seeing the happiness on her sister's face, and I would have left her to it. You, however, were not having any of it, and took Junko upstairs to have a little chat.

The girls should have known that something was wrong immediately, they should have refused to allow you to be alone with Junko, though maybe… maybe they had planned it all this way. Junko did enjoy disaster and despair, even on the receiving end.

Upstairs, in the twins’ bedroom, you confronted Junko and asked her if it would hurt to include Mukuro in her games. Her sister had been ignored all day, as Junko’s friends had no idea how to deal with a girl who would not bother reacting to them, and you hoped that Junko would at least be kind enough to entertain her sister too.  


Apparently, Junko had twisted her face into a devious grin as she asked, “Why should I bother about a dog?”

From the way the twins behaved around each other, you probably knew that I would never believe this. The twins were practically joined at the hip, they could communicate without words and preferred each other’s company to anyone else’s. That Junko, call her beloved elder sister a dog? That was something I would never have imagined.

Furious, you had yelled at her, telling her to appreciate the sister that had always been by her side even though she knew what Junko really was. No one else would ever do that for her, you said, once anyone saw through that sickly sweet mask she had on, they would abandon her and run screaming in the other direction.

“Mukuro is the only one who will love you,” you had hissed at her, “Even your idiot father would turn away once he sees how rotten you are.”

Junko had merely shrugged in response, though I think, knowing what I do now, that she had been deeply wounded by your words. It might have been then that Junko started believing no one would ever stay with her, that she was alone in the world and there was nothing she could do to change it.

“It’s not my fault that elder sister is stupid.”

That made you see red, of course. Without an ounce of shame, you told me that you had grabbed Junko by the front of her shirt and slammed her against the wall, over and over again, screaming at her for being a crazed demonspawn. She was born lucky, you told her, to have a sister as loyal as Mukuro, and she was taking it for granted and one day she would regret it horribly when Mukuro, too, left her.  


For a few moments, you reported, Junko was limp, like a rag doll, as if she didn’t feel anything at all. And then, she started to laugh.

It was maniacal, her eyes unfocused, and when you asked her why she was laughing, she began to goad you.  _ Try harder, mother _ , she had apparently said,  _ come on, show me how you really feel. _

And you did, over and over again, until there was a horrible cracking sound and Junko spat blood in your face. That broke you from your trance, you said, and you dropped her in horror, trying your best not to scream because the other children were still playing downstairs.

Junko smiled up at you and thanked you in the sweetest voice you had ever heard, and just then, Mukuro came out of nowhere with a knife and stuck it between your ribs.

It was then that you screamed, and somewhere in that mayhem, an ambulance was called, the two of you were rushed to a hospital, and my apologetic sister picked up the phone and called me with the unfortunate news.  


Your wife attacked your daughter, your other daughter stabbed your wife, come back to Japan as soon as you can. That was the first thing she said when I picked up the phone, not even bothered to say  _ hello _ or  _ sorry for calling so late _ . It was a terrifying call to receive, one my hazy brain could barely wrap around, but I understood the urgency in her tone enough to pack my bag, cancel my meetings and book the next flight back to Tokyo.  


When I arrived, panting and disheveled at their ward, Junko and Mukuro told me their version of events - you had assaulted Junko for no reason whatsoever, and Mukuro had stabbed you to get you off her. Junko was very badly hurt and Mukuro was beside herself with fury for allowing something like that to happen to her, and she looked me straight in the eyes and made me promise that you would never hurt Junko like that again. If there had been any doubt about what had truly transpired, the raw _emotion_ in Mukuro’s eyes erased it all immediately. She was not the kind to show her feelings easily, or speak to others, and that she had done both gave her story more credibility than CCTV footage would.  


On top of that, you told some fantastical story about being goaded - by your own eight year old daughter - into breaking her ribs. All the while, she was laughing like a madman, you claimed, not even bothered to hide the fact that you had assaulted a child; how did you expect me to react?

Furious, I demanded that you leave immediately and never show your face near me or my daughters ever again. You could either leave of your own will, with nothing, and be free to continue your craziness elsewhere, or attempt for a legal divorce, get nothing and probably get shut up in a mental facility for assaulting your own children.

You fell to your knees and begged for a second chance, saying that you would see a therapist privately and take whatever medication you needed to be safe around our girls, because you had nowhere else to go. You had married me against your family’s wishes, you had no job and little talent to speak of, and you needed me to survive. There was no other way, you pleaded, there was no hope for you outside of our house.  


Eventually, we came to an agreement - on top of your therapy, you would never be alone with the girls again. I hired a nanny or babysitter of some sort, sparing no expense to make sure she was the best and most stable one Japan had to offer, telling her that her job was to take care of the girls since you were ill. Unwittingly, she supervised your interactions with the girls as she took care of them, fed them and helped them with their homework, brushing Junko’s long dark hair after baths and helping Mukuro set up paper targets for practice in the garden.  


It barely took Junko an hour to charm the pants off her nanny, and it took less than a week for her to develop a soft spot for awkward, stubbornly silent little Mukuro. Drugged up, you were quieter, and everything seemed to be going smoothly. We could breathe easier now, the children and I, and I thought that this would be the end of all our problems.

Unfortunately, I was wrong.

 

Enoshima Akihisa

 

* * *

 

Dear Shizuko,

 

We enjoyed two years of peace after that, didn’t we? The girls developed well at school, going into gifted education programs, and our quiet little Mukuro found a talent for survival competitions, gaining herself a regular slot at one of the most prestigious military magazines at the age of nine. Everything was perfect, Junko had just started modeling for children’s clothes catalogs, and you hadn’t had a severe episode of craziness in a long time. I have so many precious mementos from those years, countless glossy magazines and newspaper articles carefully cut out and laminated, certificates of achievements, trophies and photographs...  


It was perfect, but only on the surface. Nothing had truly changed underneath, you were still as crazy as you were before, I was still oblivious to the glaring faults of my children, and the girls were as lonely and rotten as they had always been.

I didn’t know that you still harbored suspicions for the girls, that you were watching them like a hawk as you flushed your pills down the toilet, pretending to be normal so you could stay with us. I had fully believed that your illness was managed and everything was well between us, which was why I did not hesitate to include you in our family outings.  


That day, I was taking us all to the amusement park, to reward the twins for appearing in sellout magazines and being invited to interviews with the most popular, evening talkshow hosts. They were just like any other child set free in a place of play, rushing from ride to ride with bright eyes, holding hands and laughing the entire time. I had never seen Mukuro so at ease, so happy, and it brought tears to my eyes to watch them, shoulder to shoulder, exploring the park with reckless abandon.  


It did not take them long to be drawn by the games tent, and I gave them a few thousand yen to spend as they pleased - technically, it was their own earnings, since they were both relatively rich from their successes by that point. Junko dragged her sister down to the infamous ring toss game, the kind that practically no one can win, and when she had her go, it was as dismal as expected. Mukuro, however, was good at these kinds of things, winning the biggest prize with ease.

While Junko didn’t seem too good at any of the games, Mukuro was a master, winning prize after prize at every booth she passed. She gave every single one of them to her sister with a smile, and soon enough, the both of us were needed to help carry the sheer amount of stuffed toys Mukuro had amassed.

While I was gathering up the toys into a big tote bag, you apparently  overheard Junko telling her sister to jump off something. You tried to lean closer to get more details, but the twins seemed to have caught you, Junko grinning at you wolfishly before loudly proclaiming, “I want to take the ferris wheel!”

As we ambled over to the large, garishly decorated ferris wheel, Junko and I were trying to decide who would ride with whom, as the little cart-pod things only allowed for a maximum of three, and she didn’t want anyone to feel lonely and left out.

I was just about to agree to ride with you, leaving the sisters to themselves, when you cut in and said, “The three of you can ride together, and I’ll take care of this mountain of toys. They surely won’t fit through the door.”

Mukuro frowned a little at that, but when her sister energetically agreed, thanking you for your understanding, she shrugged and relaxed. Together, the three of us got into a bright purple pod, Junko hopping up and down with excitement as the staff member closed the door, warning us to keep our arms and legs inside the ride at all times.

Slowly, the ferris wheel turned, and as we climbed higher and higher, the girls pressed themselves eagerly to the window, looking down in amazement.

“Mother looks like a toy herself,” Junko said as she pointed down at you, and I leaned over to look. “She’s so tiny!”

I smiled as I watched them, glad to see them enjoying themselves so immensely. It took us a long way to get here, the four of us, having a normal family day doing normal, family things, without disaster and insanity chasing after us like starving dogs. Just then, our pod reached the peak of the ferris wheel, and before I knew it, Mukuro had slid her skinny frame out the window.

There was a sickening crunch as she hit the ground, people rushing around screaming below, and I was yelling with all my might for the staff to get us down as quickly as possible so I could check on my daughter. It was terrible, being trapped with some shitty elevator music in a little purple pod, unable to help your child suffering below, and those were the longest three minutes of my life.  


Junko was in tears beside me, whimpering her sister’s name and impatiently shuffling by the door, flying out to her sister’s side the second we touched the ground. Worry was written all over her face as she hugged Mukuro, who hadn’t made a single sound or acknowledged the flock of people around her, and I never would’ve thought that she’d been the one to order her sister to jump.

“I’m alright, Junko,” Mukuro had smiled, her voice surprisingly steady considering the horrible angle her leg was bent at, and the blood and bone sticking out of her knee. “Don’t cry.”

Nothing was out of the ordinary as we rushed to the hospital, Junko hugging her sister and sobbing into her shoulder while Mukuro endured the pain with impressive levels of stoicism. You even managed to pretend to be concerned, handing Junko a cuddly toy to grip onto instead, so she would not accidentally jostle her sister’s injured leg.

That evening, after the girls were asleep, Mukuro’s leg bound in a cast, you approached me and tried to tell me what you had heard. Exhausted and angry, I turned on you, demanding to know when you stopped taking your medication and why you would want to ruin the two years of peace we had enjoyed.

Hadn’t it been great, those last two years, wasn’t it everything we both ever wished for? A happy family, two insanely intelligent, talented daughters, what else could we ask for? Why did you want to throw that away and heap blames back onto Junko’s fragile shoulders?

I didn’t bother waiting for an answer, marching up the stairs to my room and slamming the door so loudly, it might have woken the girls. You remained downstairs for the longest time - the kitchen light stayed on, deep into the night, and it was still shining when I rolled over and fell asleep.

 

_Because it was the truth_ , that was what you wanted to say, wasn’t it?

 

Enoshima Akihisa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry for being MIA for a while m(_ _)m  
> Autumn is approaching and I've just been... curled up in a blanket burrito being very unproductive, watching Disney movies and playing Town of Salem. Please accept my apologies.  
> Also, thank you for the comments and kudos! They really make my day.


	7. Chapter 7

Dear Shizuko,

 

Europe was the beginning of the end for us, wasn’t it? I hadn’t known it then, but our little Mukuro had already gotten into contact with the elite agents of Fenrir, having been offered a spot due to her impressive achievements. Thirteen years old, she was only thirteen years old, yet the world’s most infamous mercenaries, soldiers and assassins had sat up to take notice of her.

Junko must have been so proud.

Thanks to their many magazine appearances, Mukuro’s as a military strategist and survivor and Junko’s as one of the sweetest, most “down-to-earth and realistic” models in Japan, we were even richer than we were before. Expensive holidays were a given, and I was free to take long leaves from work to make sure that you would never be alone with them again. Under supervision, your behavior with our daughters was quite acceptable, and since I watched you swallow your pills every day, I felt more comfortable than I ever had in years.

I should have known that our peace would not last, that everything had merely been biding its time. Junko’s bloodthirst had yet to be sated - could only be sated by her own, really - and it was only a matter of time before she found another sacrifice.

That, unfortunately, happened to be a three year old boy along the beach in the United Kingdom.

It was a nice summer day, warm by their standards and a little chilly for us, but the twins were still eager to get down to the water and maybe build a sandcastle. It was such a lovely atmosphere that even you had a skip in your step, the warm sun smiling down on our pathetic attempt to seem like a normal family.

The illusion was shaky, of course - you were blotchy and had gained weight from your medication, your hair thin and frizzy, while the twins were pale and stick-thin as if they had never had a full meal in their lives. My hair had gone prematurely white with all the stress and worry, my face lined with each and every trying year - all in all, we looked tired, no matter how happy we tried to be.

When we got to the beach, it was fairly crowded with many other families seeking to enjoy the warmth. Among them were no shortage of children the girls’ age, and I gave them a certain amount of freedom to go find a few friends to play with. They were of the age where having their bumbling, middle-aged father tailing them was a very unwelcome intrusion, and Mukuro was so intelligent and strong I knew no harm would come to them. The sea itself could rise to challenge her and I would have still trusted her to win.

I should have been thinking the other way, instead, and worried about them bringing harm to others.

Down by the water, a lovely European family were playing - a sandy haired couple with their young son, paddling around with floats. You would have recognized the look in Junko’s eyes immediately, maybe you had, even through the haze of drugs, but neither of us did a thing. Smiling idiotically, we watched as Junko easily charmed her way into the couple’s good graces, even stooping as low as to allow their son to splash water at her and giggle as he tugged at her hair.

Fluent in English, we struck up a conversation with the couple as our kids played, talking about stupid things like the length of our holidays, the wonder of the warm weather and the pleasure of having children. I had no idea how you managed to lie like that, to pretend to care about the girls you hated more than anything else in the world, but that day you really seemed like a proud mother.

“I’m going to check if mom wants company,” the young woman chuckled, looking over her shoulder at an old woman lazing under the shade of a garish pink umbrella. In a fake-whisper, she added, “My mother’s terrified of the sea. She calls it the world’s biggest toilet and won’t even step near it.”

Junko laughed, that adorable, deceptive little tinkling of bells that made her sound like a fairy princess. Choosing her words with exaggerated care, as if she were pretending to be less fluent than she really was, Junko said, “She is right, you know.”

“Well, it’s definitely the world’s prettiest toilet,” the young woman grinned, reaching out to ruffle Junko’s hair. “Play nice, and don’t drink any of it!”

Her husband gently picked up their son and made him perform a mock-salute, making us all laugh. It was a heartwarming scene, one that I had hoped would continue to form the backdrop of our days and erase the hardships that had brought us to this point.

It was foolish of me, of course. Broken ribs could heal, did heal, but broken souls were way beyond anyone’s ability to put back together. The happiness of that family, the love that they shared, the way you were so at ease with them walking up the beach to chat with the old lady, it was all a horrible affront to our Junko.

It was as if she could not stand to see love, to see happiness, but did not quite understand that the painful twisting in her chest was jealousy. Did she understand that the ache in her heart merely meant that she wanted such a thing for herself, or did she mistake it for contempt and the desire to destroy?

As I chatted to the young man in the shallow water, occasionally casting glances over his shoulder to check on the girls and what they were up to, tragedy struck.

We had barely taken our eyes off them for two minutes, discussing the best ways to celebrate our precious children’s birthdays, when Junko’s cry of panic shattered the air. The young boy was gone, she said, her voice pitched high with fear, she’d only taken her eyes off him for a second to pick up a seashell and he was gone…

She sounded so guilty, so frightened, that I completely forgot how good of a little actress she was. Wrapping an arm around her thin shoulders, I reassured her that everything was fine and there was no way he could have gone far. He had floats on, his father added, he’d be alright, they just had to find him before he got swept away.

He was trying his best to stay calm, but from the frantic way his eyes scanned the water, I knew he was afraid. Of course he would be, that was what any ordinary parent would feel, and I could see that he was aching to jump into the ocean and physically scour every wave and rock until he had his son safely in his arms once more.

Turning to the beach, I was just about to call for help when Mukuro’s soft monotone cut through the air.

“He’s over there.”

“Where?” squinting, the young man tried to match Mukuro’s eagle-eyed gaze, needing a lot of prodding and prompting to get to the right spot.

He was already quite far away, swept up in a rapid current, floundering in the water in a way that suggested his floats were no longer functional. With a desperate cry of his son’s name, the man plunged bravely, stupidly, into the rushing water.

For a moment, Junko and Mukuro shared a look, one that I would eventually come to recognize as twisted, joyous despair. Then, Mukuro took off after the two, cutting through the water with the ease and grace of a dolphin.

No, there was a lethality about it, about the way she focused on that drowning boy, more like a shark that had spotted its next meal.

It was Mukuro who got to the child first, dragging him from the current with more strength than even I had expected her to have. Instead of swimming him back to shore, however, she passed him to his frantic father in what looked like a show of kindness and understanding, but was truly an act of cruelty.

The man was not as good a swimmer as she was, and as she glided back to shore, he floundered and flailed with as much grace as a dead fish, whispering useless words to the still body in his arms.

On the beach, the nearest medical team had been alerted, and the moment the man brought his son to shore, they wrenched him from his arms and got to work. Unfortunately, the boy had inhaled too much water, the swim back had taken too long, and all their attempts at resuscitation failed miserably.

As the couple wept and raged, fingers wandering over their son’s rapidly cooling skin, Junko smiled. It was a sly, small smile, hidden by the crocodile tears in her eyes, but I had seen it before, on the day she had asked Mukuro to kill that kitten and splay its insides out on the floor.

The boy’s floats had been torn, and the medical team logically blamed the jagged rocks that lined the water’s edge. You frowned at that, casting glances at the innocent, shiny-eyed Junko, but you hadn’t said a word.

Neither of us did, on the ride back to the hotel that evening. Junko was unusually silent and withdrawn, curled up into her sister’s side as if she had been traumatized, and that act alone had been enough to wipe the suspicion from my mind. The poor things, I thought, why did tragedy seem to dog their every step, a cruel master? Had they not suffered enough in their lives, I had wondered as I watched Junko drift off against Mukuro’s shoulder, her sister gently brushing a kiss into her forehead, why was the world so determined to harm them?

In that case, I, as their father, would have to protect them with everything I had.

 

Enoshima Akihisa

 

* * *

  
Dear Shizuko,

 

Do you remember the end of that holiday, the genuine panic and twisted agony in Junko’s eyes as we paced the lobby of our hotel on that final day, waiting for the police to arrive? Do you remember how she sobbed at her sister’s farewell letter, refusing to let any of us touch it?

It took the police a lot of coercing to convince Junko to let them read it, and they promised to give it back to her as soon as they could make a copy. It was the last gift Mukuro had left her sister, after all, and it was too precious for Junko to be parted with on any account.

According to the letter, Mukuro said she had found a duty in Europe, her skills had been recognized and deemed required by a certain organization, and she would not be coming home with us. She had never truly felt at home as a schoolgirl, trying to blend in and pretend that battle was not in her blood; she could not turn down this call.

“But, should you ever need me, Junko-chan, I will be right there,” she had written, and at that time, we thought it was nothing more than that pointless, reassuring thing everyone who left a loved one would say.

Things like  _ we are connected beyond words _ , like  _ I will always be with you, in your heart _ , platitudes to ease the pain of separation that amounted to nothing in reality. That was what we all believed Mukuro’s words to be - but Junko knew better, Junko knew exactly what she meant. Looking back, I think it might have been because she had planned all of it, that she had instructed Mukuro to abandon her and to train with Fenrir, to improve her skills as an attack dog.

Mukuro’s words were a simple promise, no, a simple  _ statement _ \- “I will come back to you when you call for me.” As we floundered and panicked, extending our holiday by as many days as possible to search for her, we had no idea that the surefire way to bring Mukuro home was sobbing right by our side.

Obviously, we never found her, and we were forced to return to Japan to live out our everyday lives without her. No matter how tragic the circumstances, the world would keep spinning on, and time would continue its steady march. Intense grief was not enough to grind everything to a halt, would never be enough, and Junko was forced to move onward whether she liked it or not.

As expected, due to our family status, Mukuro’s disappearance caused an international stir, especially because it seemed she had gone willingly. The police struggled to trail her - Europe’s porous borders on top of our little girl’s skills made her impossible to pin down, and there were sightings of a skinny little Asian girl in military gear from Belgium to Germany to the Netherlands within the first week alone.

Meanwhile, back in Japan, a startling change came across our Junko. She dyed her hair a strange shade of pink-blond, stayed out late in Harajuku and Shibuya and only came home with the last train. Rumors had it that she had even started smoking, buying packs from the vending machines when no one was looking and hanging out in alleyways to suck the poison into her lungs. I had never managed to confirm that last one - Junko was a sly one, of course, and would never have allowed herself to be caught red-handed. And with all the new perfume she was using, it was impossible to find the scent of cigarette smoke.

Her skirts got shorter, her fake nails and boots longer, her heels higher and her smile colder. She continued to model, of course, becoming a popular face in  _ gyaru _ magazines and the like, but it was obvious that she missed her sister. She wouldn’t talk about it, avoiding Mukuro’s name and room and hiding away all signs of her sister’s presence in the back of the house, but it was so easy to tell. It was awful to see, I thought that Junko felt betrayed by her sister’s abandonment and wished I could help her, but you…

You were  _ gloating _ about it.

I caught you once, and only once, sneering at an empty-eyed Junko as she stumbled back home at some ungodly hour, eyes rimmed red with tears she would never shed within the walls of our home.

“So it seems even your sister left you,” your words dripped with venom, with self-satisfaction. “I told you to take better care of her. She was the only one in the world who ever loved you, and even she grew sick of you.”

Junko took it quietly, with her head lowered, and the kicked-puppy look in her eyes convinced me that she believed your words, that she was sure Mukuro abandoned her because of some character flaw she had. Furious, I had burst in and slapped you across the face, startling you both, my raised voice ripping through the quiet house.

“How can you say something like that?” I had never felt so angry in my life, as if I were a hair’s breadth away from wrapping my hands around your throat. “How can you be so cruel?”

How could a mother say such horrible words to her own daughter, how could an adult rub salt into the wounds of a lost child? Did you not have a heart inside you, had your insanity corrupted you so completely that you lost all sense of humanity? Junko was  _ suffering _ , so plainly that anyone could see it, and your reaction was to rip into her when she was down?

“Maybe she’s right,” Junko had interrupted me; the emptiness and exhaustion in her tone haunts me til this day.

I had no idea if she was pretending, trying to gain sympathy, but I never heard Junko speak that way ever again. It was as if someone had gouged out her insides with a giant spoon, leaving her to collapse pitifully in on herself.

“Junko…” As if she hadn’t heard me, Junko walked out of the room, and I realized that her hands were clenched into tight fists.

With nails like the monstrosities she wore on a daily basis, that meant… when I went after her, I saw it, the barely visible flecks of scarlet staining the marble floors. My heart ached for her, Shizuko, it cracked right down the middle as I watched her retreat to her room.

I became ridiculously overprotective of her, wanting to cushion her from any more pain, any more harm that the world wanted to throw at her. When the school complained about how she was flouting the rules - dyed hair, makeup, a skirt that was nearly three inches too short - I leapt to her defense.

“How would you feel if you look into the mirror and see the person you’ve been waiting for staring back at you? Her sister is  _ gone _ , can you blame her for wanting to look different, to not see her ghost in every reflective surface?”

I thought I had understood her, the reason behind her drastic transformation; I still believe I did, today. It must have been painful, seeing Mukuro in the curve of her lips, the angle of her eyes and the slant of her jaw, but nothing… nothing could have hurt more than losing her completely. Wiping away even the illusion, enforcing the idea that she was alone; the pain probably brought Junko satisfaction.

Maybe it was a way of penance, a self-inflicted punishment for being unlovable, for chasing away the only one who would ever devote herself to her. Or maybe it was just her self-destructing, wondering if she could die before her sister decided to return.

The school, backed into a corner, decided to slacken the rules a little just for Junko’s sake. After all, the missing Enoshima twin was a huge thing all over social media, and many people were tracking Junko’s reactions through various news sources. Wanting to seem understanding, and not wanting to incur the wrath of Junko’s fans, the school made us a deal.

Junko could keep her hair dyed and her makeup on, as long as she wore her uniform properly. And, if possible, her hair should be a darker color - a reddish brown, perhaps, something a little less obvious.

On top of that, the school suggested something I should have let her done, something that made me bristle in defensive rage back then.

“Some counseling might help her come to terms with the grief,” the principal had said, “We are in contact with some of the best psychologists across Japan, and can easily arrange something for you, Enoshima-san.”

Before I could respond, sputtering in shock and rage, Junko had said, her voice uncharacteristically small, “I would like that, Papa.”

No, there was no way I would let my child go to some doctor for crazy people. What would the world think, especially once Junko’s scars from her childhood were exposed? You were enough of a blemish on our grand family name, since it was known that you had taken medicine for a period, and I did not want it to worsen.

Rumors were flying that you mistreated our girls, that Mukuro fled to Europe to escape you and was now trying to help Junko join her. Should Junko go to counseling, and reveal the extent of your abuses…

No. I could not allow that, and I said as much. She would be fine, I promised her, we just needed to move out of the house haunted by ghosts of her sister, stay somewhere else and recover.

A change of pace and scenery, that would be good, the principal had agreed immediately, and Junko just meekly accepted it.

I should’ve known that another house wasn’t going to solve our problems, even if you weren’t in it. I left you to take care of our old home, alone, where you couldn’t deal any more damage to our fragile daughter. I filled the new house with things Junko would enjoy - her room was huge, had a walk-in closet and a private bathroom with an elegant bathtub. I even made an extra room just for her to pile the gifts her fans sent us - giant toy rabbits, teddy bears, flowers; they arrived in endless streams.

For a while, everything seemed to stabilize again, Junko slowly grew accustomed to life without her twin. It was hard, some mornings she would come down with her hair tousled and her eyes half-closed, not quite awake yet, and mumble a sleepy  _ good morning, nee-chan. _

And then she’d pause, freezing up like a deer in the headlights, before stalking back up to her room without another word. I hated mornings like those the most, because Junko felt so incredibly far away, and I could do nothing to ease my little girl’s pain.

I never stopped searching, even as the hype died down, hiring private investigators across the globe in an attempt to pin Mukuro down. However, I kept Junko in the dark about these projects, not wanting to fill her with false hope. Mukuro was painfully elusive - there would be a sighting in Russia one day, and then one in Afghanistan the next, and the day after that she would somehow be in Saudi Arabia or Indonesia or something.

At first, we thought it was just cases of mistaken identity, but as time passed, the investigators all came to the same conclusion. Our Mukuro was working with an elite organization with the money and equipment to conduct constant, under-the-radar flights. And it wasn’t just any other rich organization, its name was Fenrir.

_ Fenrir. _ Even someone who kept out of the underworld such as myself shuddered at the sound of that name. I had not imagined that Mukuro had gone to them, had not dreamed for a moment that she was roaming with the world’s most dangerous killers.

They were the most infamous of the mercenary corporations, efficient attack dogs for hire that found no battlefield too dangerous, no target too difficult and no client too shady.

That… that should have been a sign of what Junko was planning; you would’ve seen it immediately, wouldn’t you? Why else would Junko send her sister on a crash course in international mass murder and assassination unless she planned on committing something similar herself?

But I was none the wiser, I thought I was one step ahead in this game with Junko. I thought she had no idea what her sister was doing, that she believed Mukuro had been kidnapped, or was staying with a better, more stable family in Europe.

But she was the one ahead, Shizuko, by so damn many steps.

 

Enoshima Akihisa

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am terribly sorry for taking so long to update...  
> My Winter holidays have arrived, so I might write more? Or I might just roll around binge-watching old anime again... Please forgive me!


End file.
